17 Ly Nam De Street
and
3 Duong Thanh Street
Background
These two sightings are combined because they are closely related,
in fact and in Garwood's claims.
On the Garwood "live sighting" front page, I described the activities at
#17 Ly Nam De Street and #3 Duong Thanh Street. If you have not read that
description, backtrack to the Garwood Live Sighting front page,
read the introductory material -- paying special attention to #17 Ly Nam De and #3 Duong
Thanh -- then come back here.
Garwood's Claims
Garwood makes three different claims of having seen or encountered US POWs at #17 Ly
Nam De Street and #3 Duong Thanh Street.
- Garwood claims that, sometime in late 1978, he went to the second floor of a building in a compound at #17 Ly Nam De Street. There, he claims, he looked down the hall and saw ". . . a bearded face, deep sunken eyes, and thinning hair . . ." peering out of a room. The face withdrew into the room and Garwood did not see the man again at Ly Nam De. Garwood claims that, at this time, NVA guards told him that there were perhaps seven US POWs there who had been transferred from a prison camp at Cao Bang, near the Chinese border.
- Garwood then states that, three months later ( October 1978 ), he saw the same face at #3 Duong Thanh, at a distance of approximately 100 feet.
- Garwood claims that, one night while he was staying in transient quarters at #17 Ly Nam De Street, he heard people walking past his room. He "determined" that these people were five to seven US POWs.
Analysis
General
Garwood's Ly Nam De and Duong Thanh "sightings" are interesting from two aspects. First, the compounds around #17 Ly Nam De are of special interest to former Congressman Billy Hendon and his partner, Senator Bob Smith. Second, when we review the mortician's story, we conclude that there likely were two people, possibly Americans, with whom Garwood associated at #3 Duong Thanh and, possibly, at Ly Nam De.
There is a large body of evidence that establishes the fact that the compounds in question were frequented by foreigners, most if not all of whom were Soviet bloc military personnel. There is also clear evidence that Garwood was a frequent visitor to these compounds. When he visited Hanoi from outside the city, he would check in at 3 Duong Thanh to pick up his meal and lodging vouchers then he would eat and sleep at 17 Ly Nam De. Thus, we must conclude that Garwood encountered, or knew of, the presence of these Soviet bloc personnel at both locations.
Garwood's claims are not so solid
When DIA showed Garwood overhead photographs of the Ly Nam De compound and surrounding area, he was not able to identify or locate the compound. When DIA showed Garwood handheld, ground-level photos of the Ly Nam De compound, he could not identify it.
The original Ly Nam De sighting
Now, here comes another part of this tale. In the late 1970s, a refugee was interviewed in a Hong Kong refugee camp. This man was from Hanoi and he had some familiarity with the compound at #17 Ly Nam De. He was interviewed several times and polygraphed twice. It was clear that he had been in the Ly Nam De compound. He was able to describe some of the buildings and activities there but he was not completely familiar with the compounds around #17.
This source claimed that he frequently visited the two-story apartment building at #17 Ly Nam De where senior NVA officers lived. He hinted that he was involved in black market activities and this is quite likely. NVA officers, who had access to imported goods that civilians could not obtain often supplemented their incomes by black market trading. The source claimed that, on two occasions in the late 1970s, he observed six or so Caucasians bathing in water around a cistern at the foot of a water tower at #17 Ly Nam De. He further claimed that he was told by his hosts that these men were US POWs who were still being held.
The investigation into the original Ly Nam De sighting
DIA found and interviewed seventeen people who were very familiar with the compounds
around #17 Ly Nam De. These people reported, unanimously and without disagreement,
that they were aware of -- some had even seen -- US POWs in the compound during the
war. ( This is not surprising because one of the buildings in the Ly Nam De
complex was an old French villa that was used to house US POWs during the war; the
Americans held here called it "The Plantation.")
These seventeen sources reported, unanimously, that all US POWs left
the compound in 1973 and they had neither heard of or observed Americans in or around the
compounds since early 1973. Finally, these seventeen sources reported the frequent
presence of Soviet bloc personnel in and around the Ly Nam De compound.
These sources included a NVA major who served as interpreter and escort for Soviet bloc personnel living at Ly Nam De and several people from the neighborhood who were frequent visitors to the NVA families living in the compound.
The original source claimed that he had observed the US POWs bathing around a cistern at the base of a water tower in the compound. There is, in fact, a water tower in the compound with a cistern at its base. ( Few places in Hanoi have running water. All over the place are cisterns that hold rainwater or water that is piped in and held in the cistern for use in cooking, bathing, whatever. Most of these cisterns have small roofs covering them to keep out leaves and other trash. The presence of a cistern, then, is not an unusual event. )
US intelligence has a lot of overhead photography of this compound because we knew US POWs were there during the war and we photographed it often. We assembled some of these photos of the compound and showed them to the source. He pointed, emphatically, to the second story balcony where he claimed to have stood when he made his sighting, and equally emphatically to the water tower with the cistern at the bottom. There is one problem. From the two-story apartment building, even from the second-story balcony, one cannot see the base of the water tower because there is another two-story building between the apartment building and the water tower. From where this source claimed, time and again, that he was standing when he saw the "Americans," he was looking directly into a brick wall. US intelligence was able to obtain hand-held photographs shot from the street that also showed that it is impossible to see what this guy claimed to have seen. When we pointed this out to him, he studied the photos for a while, then claimed that he was mistaken, the cistern was actually located right here -- and he put his finger on another spot on the photo. Problem is that spot is hidden behind the same building.
The guy was polygraphed and the results were inconclusive when he was asked is he had seen people who were identified to him as US POWs.
Based on the reports from seventeen other stories and on the impossibility of seeing what this guy claimed to have seen, we concluded that he was not telling the truth. We believe that he may have observed some Soviet bloc personnel in the compound and was embellishing this fact in hopes of gaining admission to the US. ( He eventually emigrated to Australia. )
Billy Hendon has continued to leap on this story; it is one of his favorites. In fact, in the early 1980s, Hendon and a group of Congressmen went to Hanoi. They went to the Ly Nam De compound where Hendon and then-Congressman Bob Smith barged in past the gate guard. They searched around the compound until they found a covered cistern at the side of a building at which time they announced that they had found the cistern that DIA could not find, that this proved the validity of the original sighting and of Garwood's sighting. Not so fast. The cistern they found was covered by a roof and was not visible from anywhere except standing next to it.
Garwood's claim to have encountered US POWs in the Ly Nam De compound has too many similarities to the original Ly Nam De story to be coincidental. You see, Hendon had become very familiar with the original Ly Nam De story in the early 1980s, before he began an association with Garwood in 1981. I believe that Hendon fed Garwood this story after he learned that Garwood had some familiarity with the Ly Nam De area.
The Mortician's story
Recall from the mortician's story that he reported having encountered three Caucasians at #3 Duong Thanh Street. He encountered these men more than once and he saw them at Duong Thanh individually and together as two or all three. When he inquired about them, he was told that they were "American progressives who were working for the revolution." Later, when the mortician had immigrated to the US, he met Garwood and told DIA that Garwood was one of the three men he had seen at Duong Thanh.
Who were the other two? There are two possibilities.
 | First, these other two could have been collaborators just like Garwood. If so, where are they today ( 1998 ) ?? Who knows. Maybe still in Hanoi, maybe gone to a third country, maybe slipped back into the US. |
| Second, they could have been not Americans or not GIs. US POWs were not the only people in Hanoi and Jane Fonda, Ramsey Clark, and Cora Weiss were not the only Americans traveling to Hanoi to give aid and comfort to the enemy. US "leftists" and "intellectuals" have popped up at odd places for years. Americans went to visit Stalin's Soviet Union in the 20s and 30s and came back announcing that they had "seen the future and it works." Eldridge Cleaver ( founder of the Black Panthers ) lived in Algeria then in North Korea. Americans lived and worked with the Communists in China all the way from the early 1900s up to the present. Ditto for Cuba. Why would there not be a couple of Berkeley graduate students, for example, living in Hanoi during the war to show their solidarity with the Vietnamese Communists? |
Conclusions
There are two conclusions on these claims by Garwood.
| First, he did not see or encounter US POWs either at #17 Ly Nam De or at #3 Duong Than. |
| Second, he likely did encounter an unknown number of Soviet bloc personnel and one or two other people, known to him, one or both of whom possibly was an American. |
These encounters, with Soviet bloc personnel and, possibly, one or two other Americans living freely in Hanoi, are at the basis of this claim by Garwood. Furthermore, this one of Garwood's claimed sightings of US POWs in Vietnam was, in my opinion, generated by Garwood's association with Billy Hendon. Hendon had a lot to gain by having Garwood "corroborate" one of his favorite stories and Garwood had motivation to get close the Hendon. Click here to read my conspiracy theory.